


the sun's not shining

by irritable



Category: Victorious
Genre: F/F, drabble with barely any plot basically lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-22 22:25:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11389656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irritable/pseuds/irritable
Summary: The rain isn’t so bad after all.





	the sun's not shining

**Author's Note:**

> i miss jori and i was going to title this fic "sky water is strange"

There’s something tragic about rainstorms in LA, Tori thinks. Though scarce, usually bracketed by long periods of constant sun, it never fails to put her in a contemplative mood. There’s something so quiet about it. Isolated.

She sniffs a little, bumps clumsily at her nose with the sleeve of her sweatshirt and squints over at the tomatoes growing in her backyard. It’s almost midnight, but the lights from the living room are enough for Tori to see basic outlines.

The rain continues to fall, slipping down blades of grass and clinging to the windows.

She won’t cry, not because of this, not for Jade. Again. She’s already shed enough tears on her.

Her parents are gone for the weekend and Trina’s conked out from trying to belt out the national anthem while running 9 miles an hour on the treadmill, leaving the Vega house unusually quiet.

It really doesn’t help the mood. Tori feels another wave of melancholy rush over her. This time when she wipes at her face, her sleeve comes away damp.

She huffs out a little curse and looks away from her sleeve to stare stubbornly out the window, watching specks of water bounce out of an overfilling pot with every raindrop diving in.

If being with Jade has proven anything, it’s that fear goes a long way, so Jade’s not even at fault here, not entirely at least. Tori reckons that single fact makes it all worse because she can’t even blame her fully because Tori  _understands_. She mutters out a, “ _God_ ,” and wipes at her face again.

She gets up, closing the lid of the piano, and shuffles over to the kitchen for tissues. The rain pitter-patters almost inaudibly behind her.

Her phone, on the coffee table, chimes and she briefly considers ignoring it, but in the end, tosses her balled up tissues into the bin before trudging over.

It’s funny how four glowing letters on a screen is enough to prompt such a reaction out of her; she goes rigid, eyes wide, teeth worrying at her lower lip.  _Jade_. Her finger hovers over the notification, eyes flickering up, away and she backs up until her knees knock into the couch, buckling.

The need to curl up and bury her face into a pillow is strong, except she’s barely made a move to grab the nearest throw pillow when her phone chimes again. She bites the tip of her thumb and weighs her options: ignore Jade, face her wrath and possibly death, or don’t, and risk bursting into tears even after her curiosity is satisfied.

Finally, she sighs, blinks her eyes, so they’re not as blurry as before and glances back down at her phone.

Tucking her feet under herself, she unlocks the phone and opens the chat before she can talk herself out of it. Now Jade will know she’s read her messages.

 **JADE:**  I’m outside your house. Open the door.

 **JADE:**  Please.

Fear seizes Tori by the throat and she shifts on the couch, apprehensive. There’s another message now.

 **JADE:**  Sorry.

There’s a small, petty part of her that considers leaving Jade out in the rain, but it’s drowned out by her, you know, human decency. There’s a chance that a bit of it is just because she just wants to see what Jade will do. Tori sighs again and tosses her phone aside.

She takes a moment to wipe her face clean of tears as best she can and hopes Jade will miss how bloodshot her eyes are. She’s just about to smooth out the wrinkles on her top and retie her hair when she pauses; that same angry part of her wins out this time and she leaves her bun as it is. Jade hasn’t done anything yet to deserve Tori’s attempts to look presentable.

With a deep breath, she cracks the door open and peeks out into the rain. There’s no one on her porch, so she opens the door wider and stomps into a pair of boots.

There in the driveway sits Jade’s car. She's typing away on her phone in the driver’s seat and Tori knows that it’s her phone buzzing on the other end.

Suddenly the rain feels stifling. It's a constant pressure on Tori's shoulders, figuratively and literally, now that she’s striding through the downpour over to the car.

Jade finally notices her when she’s crossed half the distance. Tori stops short when Jade clenches her jaw and swings the door open, meeting Tori halfway, the slam of the door slicing through the air behind her.

They’re a couple of feet apart and Tori fights the overwhelming urge to close the distance. It would be easy, just to reach out and cling on. She’s soaked to the bone by now and there are goosebumps on her arms under the Hollywood Arts sweatshirt.

Jade’s eyebrows twitch and she inches closer.

Her eyebrow stud isn’t in and her hair is a sopping mess sticking to her cheeks. She looks... soft, kind of. At least unthreatening,  _bare_. She won’t use the word vulnerable because there’s rarely a time to use that word on Jade West and this isn’t one of those instances.

“You texted?” Tori prompts, patience running out.

Jade’s eyebrows furrow and Tori almost smirks, watching as Jade restrains herself from replying with something snippy. Jade groans softly, a rumble in her chest, pushing the hair out of her face aggressively, and takes a deep breath. “Fuck it.”

And that’s it? Tori blinks and lifts an eyebrow, unimpressed. Jade’s only a foot away now, barely and there’s a weight to her gaze that makes Tori’s breath catch.

“Uh, what?” she says, uncertain.

“Fuck it, Tori,” Jade says again. She seems to hesitate before she mutters, “ _Fuck it,_ ” for the third time and pointedly puts her hands on Tori’s waist. “I don’t care anymore. I don’t care what Beck or what my parents or– I _don’t care_ what they think.”

She feels defenseless like this, with Jade’s eyes darting across her face, but doesn’t retreat.

“Do you regret it?” There’s a minute change in Jade’s expression that Tori instantly registers as caution. She feels herself steeling up. “Are you going to take it back?”

There’s a pause, but ultimately Jade shakes her head, a mere jerking of her head, once left and once right. “No.” Jade breaks eye contact with her for the first time and tilts her head to the house. “Where are your parents?”

Not that there’s much for Jade to be apologizing for in the first place, seeing as Tori gets the motivation behind Jade’s decision to break things off, but simply knowing that Jade’s probably cringing internally at their _incredibly_ clichéd exchange is enough to make Tori more lenient, more forgiving.

“A retreat. Trina’s sleeping already.” Tori watches Jade, something she finds herself doing often. Although, more often than not, Jade’s looking right back at her. She leans closer into Tori and her hands sweep an inch higher. Her body heat seeps through Tori’s wet clothes and spreads into her skin. “Why are you really here, Jade? What do you want?”

Jade slants her head, shooting her an annoyed look. “Don’t play dumb, Vega.”

Tori rolls her eyes and makes to push one of Jade’s arms off her, except she stops, hand resting on Jade’s bare forearm. Jade’s  _trying_ , she knows this. Her skin is slippery against Tori's palm, so she subconsciously tightens her grip. Jade’s trying, but Tori doesn’t owe Jade anything, she knows this too.

It can’t be helped if she feels pleased due to the way Jade’s eyes pin onto where Tori’s thumb slides into the inside of her elbow, to the way Jade sinks her teeth into her bottom lip.

“Tori.”

There’s a raindrop running down the curve of Jade’s nose, joining another one at the tip of her nose and dripping off the curve of it. She cups her other hand around Jade’s face and swipes the pad of her thumb across her cheek.

“Are you going to kiss me now?”

Impatient as always, Tori thinks fondly. She steps closer and Jade’s arms instinctively slip farther around her waist to adjust. “Would you like me to?”

Jade’s arms tighten around her, stopping just before it can get painful and prompting a laugh out of Tori. They’re nose-to-nose now. “I love you and I’m not taking it back,” Jade says, rolling her eyes like admitting it is an inconvenience on her part (though Tori grins at the way Jade ends up looking  _almost_ bashful). “So stop being a dumb ass.”

The moment is so  _Jade_  that Tori excuses her for her complete lack of romance. Tori drags her right hand up off Jade’s forearm and kisses her lightly. Only a gentle brush of lips.

Everything’s so familiar – the heat of Jade’s body against hers, the curving of her lips close enough to her face that she can  _feel_ the smirk, and the barely there smell of her shampoo. It’s strange to think that just ten minutes ago she was draped on a piano and tearing up over this girl.

She should be concerned, really, about how easily she falls back into Jade’s arms.

They bob in the same direction a bit as Jade arches back to get a look at Tori’s face, so that Tori ends up pushing her weight more onto Jade than her own feet. “You’re overthinking.”

Of course Jade can tell. (Apparently, she’s got a trademark frowny face.)

“Stop doing that,” Jade says, backing them up and twisting them around to press Tori into the car door.

Tori snorts and glances up through her eyelashes at Jade. At this close a proximity, she can feel Jade’s breath fan over her skin.

It’s truly a sight. Maybe Jade  _is_  trying to be romantic. Tori assumes this is why Jade hasn’t already dragged them under the cover of the porch literally only ten strides away. There’s really something to be said about kissing at midnight in the middle of a Californian rainfall, streetlights off to the side, making Jade’s face glow softly from the left.

Jade raises her eyebrows. “Kiss me again.”

Tori slings her arms around Jade’s shoulders, pulls her lower down, and bites back the urge to ask for a ‘please’ along with that request. Usually, Jade’s only two inches taller than her, but slanted against the car, Jade’s got about another extra inch over her.

One of Jade’s hands loosens from Tori’s waist and hovers over her face, unsure, brushing gently at Tori’s jaw just as Tori surges forwards, pressing their lips together. Jade releases a sharp breath through her nose and her hand finally grips at the back of her neck, warm and firm, fingers splayed out with her thumb resting on Tori’s jawline.

All prior make out sessions with ex-boyfriends, even previous ones with Jade herself, can’t even  _compare_  to the gentleness of this, the fragility of the moment.

Their janitor’s closet romps were all rushed: Jade’s tongue down her throat and maybe, possibly, scissors poking at her thigh where it’s hooked around Jade’s hip. Saturdays in her room were insistent: wildfires lit across her skin and blunt nails down her skin. Even that last night in Jade’s car which had left Tori moping in her living room for the weekend. That was bruising, a way to get an angry point across.

It’s rare, to get an opportunity to just kiss Jade and Tori savors every second of it. She takes it slow and Jade seems content to follow, the satisfied hum contending this.

They part, but only for Tori to push some hair out of Jade’s eyes. There’d been one curly strand tickling at her neck, dyed blue only recently. She curls that one around her finger and kisses Jade again, open-mouthed.

Tori slips a hand under Jade’s loose, unbuttoned flannel and over the tank top, fingers skirting past Jade’s favorite pair of scissors tucked into her waistband. Above them, thunder rumbles and the downpour worsens.

When they pull away this time, Tori nudges Jade back a few steps. “We should go in.”

Jade agrees, not complaining when Tori catches her before she can walk off first just to tangle their fingers together.

“Why didn’t we just talk in the house?” Tori huffs under her breath as she kicks her waterlogged boots off, setting them aside by the door, so they don’t track water everywhere and waits for Jade to fully yank off her Doc Martens.

“Great question,” Jade says, exasperated, as she gives her boots a vicious tug, letting it fling off into the doorframe.

“Were you trying to be _romantic_?” She’s grinning as she helps Jade up off the floor after she finally gets the other boot loose enough to kick off.

Jade scoffs and pushes Tori up against the door frame (she likes doing that, pressing Tori against various horizontal structures, she noticed this early on). “I don’t do romance.”

It’s cute, actually, Jade’s annoyed grumble.

Tori allows Jade one more peck before she boops Jade’s nose with the tip of her finger and slips away. “That’s a lie and we both know it. Close the door, please. I’ll go get us some towels.”

The rain isn’t so bad after all. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> someone (not rachel) pls talk to me abt my jori headcanons @portiallin.tumblr.com


End file.
